The Age of Innocence eBook

“Well—?” he questioned, sitting
down on the bench, and looking up at her with a frown
that he tried to make playful.

She dropped back into her seat and went on:
“You mustn’t think that a girl knows as
little as her parents imagine. One hears and
one notices—­one has one’s feelings
and ideas. And of course, long before you told
me that you cared for me, I’d known that there
was some one else you were interested in; every one
was talking about it two years ago at Newport.
And once I saw you sitting together on the verandah
at a dance—­ and when she came back into
the house her face was sad, and I felt sorry for her;
I remembered it afterward, when we were engaged.”

Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she sat
clasping and unclasping her hands about the handle
of her sunshade. The young man laid his upon
them with a gentle pressure; his heart dilated with
an inexpressible relief.

“My dear child—­was that it?
If you only knew the truth!”

She raised her head quickly. “Then there
is a truth I don’t know?”

He kept his hand over hers. “I meant,
the truth about the old story you speak of.”

“But that’s what I want to know, Newland—­what
I ought to know. I couldn’t have my happiness
made out of a wrong—­an unfairness—­to
somebody else. And I want to believe that it
would be the same with you. What sort of a life
could we build on such foundations?”

Her face had taken on a look of such tragic courage
that he felt like bowing himself down at her feet.
“I’ve wanted to say this for a long time,”
she went on. “I’ve wanted to tell
you that, when two people really love each other,
I understand that there may be situations which make
it right that they should—­should go against
public opinion. And if you feel yourself in any
way pledged . . . pledged to the person we’ve
spoken of . . . and if there is any way . . . any
way in which you can fulfill your pledge . . . even
by her getting a divorce . . . Newland, don’t
give her up because of me!”

His surprise at discovering that her fears had fastened
upon an episode so remote and so completely of the
past as his love-affair with Mrs. Thorley Rushworth
gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view.
There was something superhuman in an attitude so recklessly
unorthodox, and if other problems had not pressed
on him he would have been lost in wonder at the prodigy
of the Wellands’ daughter urging him to marry
his former mistress. But he was still dizzy with
the glimpse of the precipice they had skirted, and
full of a new awe at the mystery of young-girlhood.

For a moment he could not speak; then he said:
“There is no pledge—­no obligation
whatever—­of the kind you think. Such
cases don’t always—­present themselves
quite as simply as . . . But that’s no matter
. . . I love your generosity, because I feel
as you do about those things . . . I feel that
each case must be judged individually, on its own